


Himself Alone

by sister_coyote



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He had to know. And he wished no hurt upon anyone in the pursuit of that knowledge, but still, he needed to know.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Himself Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackOfNone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/gifts).



The chocobo Edward chose was, perhaps, too good a mount to really suit the role he was playing. She was a creature of excellent bloodline, one of the desert runners that had made Damcyan’s breeders famous: liquid of eye, swift of foot, both agile and intelligent. He’d named her Mirram, after his long-dead mother, and though he knew it might be wiser to take a cart-chocobo instead, he couldn’t bear to leave her.

Edward was careful, therefore, to give her simple tack, brass and leather, and though he kept her feet wrapped and her spurfeathers trimmed he didn’t wipe away all the dust that covered her glossy coat of feathers. No point making her heritage _too_ clear. Not if he was going to be passing as an ordinary bard, a sellsong who played for a few coppers and a place to sleep by the fire.

The sun was starting to come up, streaking traces of red and gold along the desert horizon. Edward paused to breathe deep and still his shaking hands. No need to rush. The night-guard had been too cowed by rank (ah, rank, that most double-edged of swords) to question why his king wanted to visit the stables so early in the morning. The dawn-guard was more suspicious, less trusting, and would surely look in… but the morning-guard wasn’t scheduled to take his turn until after daybreak.

Edward had time.

He had packed simply: a bedroll (he had practiced in secret, sleeping on the bare floor with nothing but a few layers of cloth between himself and stone), a sturdy change of clothes, strong soap for washing his clothes should he be fortunate enough to find water for washing. A potion. A measure of journeybread and dried meat and cheese taken from the soldiers’ storeroom.

And, wrapped in soft silk and put away carefully, his lute.

He’d named her Cedarheart, and apart from her maker (who had crafted her of the cedars of the high hills of Damcyan, and inlaid her with mica and mother-of-pearl, and strung her to sing sweet and low) he was the only one who had ever touched her. He put her in the specially-crafted case, made of wicker and well-padded, and hung it carefully from his pack before he mounted up.

“Well, my two ladies,” he said to Mirram and Cedarheart, “shall we go?”

Mirram was swift as her bloodlines had promised, and so they were five miles from Damcyan before daybreak, and ten by the time the dawn guard took their places. By the time his seneschal found that he was nowhere in the city, he would be far, far away.

There would be panic when they found his letter, he knew, although looking at the hard blue desert sky it was hard even to imagine panic. So calm, here, with the ever-shifting colors of the sand dunes and the sky so clear and sure above. There would be panic, and he felt no joy, thinking of it; he felt no joy at the pain he would cause his people.

But he had to leave because he had to _know_ : who was he, truly, when he was not Prince Edward of Damcyan? Was there any merit to his heart, was their any worth to the music he made, when he was seen not as the Prince but merely as… himself?

He had to know. And he wished no hurt upon anyone in the pursuit of that knowledge, but still, he needed to know.

* * *

“Sing me a song, bard,” the man nearest the fire demanded. He was a little drunk, but mostly cheerful, and Edward knew now—after a few months of wandering—how much to push, and how far.

“My voice will be sweeter if wetted with beer,” Edward parried, “and sweeter still if it chimes along with silver.”

The man snorted, but—he was not a bad sort, after all—tossed coin Edward’s way. Edward caught it readily one-handed and secreted it within his purse, and then tuned Cedarheart. For this crowd, a ballad, maybe, something with a hint of wistfulness about lost love,but with a cheery chorus to keep them drinking and laughing….

He struck the first chord and began to sing, but the corner of his eye, his sideways glance, caught… something.

No, someone.

A woman, dark hair like chocolate, fair skin like the harvest moon. Looking at him out of the corner of her own eye, smiling at his song… and so he sang to her, wove her into his melody….

Afterward, she brought him cider though he didn’t ask for anything, and told him that her name was Anna of Mysidia.

* * *

His body ached all over. That was the first thing he realized, even before he had the energy to unglue his eyelids, to lift his head. He hurt everywhere, his skin scoured, his bones bruised, his muscles strained past discomfort into pain. And his head throbbed. And—

“Try not to over-exert yourself,” said someone, some woman. Her voice was sweet as well water, clear as the sky in summer. A damp cloth brushed over his forehead, his eyelids. “You’ve been asleep a while.”

“Wh-where am I?”

“The Citadel of Troia,” the sweet voice said. “We’ve been taking care of you for a few days now. I don’t suppose you remember who you are?”

His mind occupied itself—helplessly monomaniacal— first on trying to figure out who she was. Gentle woman, sweet voice….

 _Anna?_

And then memory crashed over him like… like the wave that had swamped Fabul’s ship, and his throat closed, choked afresh with grief. Anna. Anna was dead.

And he knew who he was, the man who had loved Anna, the Prince of Damcyan for all the good it had done them, he was— “Edward,” he said aloud, to his nurse. “Edward von Muir. Of Damcyan.” He peeled his eyelids open, finally, looking up into the clean bright light of an infirmary, into a face as calm and lovely as it was worried.

“Well,” she said, “don’t mind that now. Rest. Rest.” And he closed his eyes and slipped into the mercy of sleep.

* * *

Rydia always knew the day, somehow, even though her travels between the Feymarch and the human realm distorted her sense of time. Still, somehow, she was always there, always on time.

He met her as a child, but she stood, now, as an adult on the ramparts, holding the brazier for him.

He burned incense: lily and lotus and golden rose for Anna; pine and orange-peel and cinnamon for Tellah. They didn’t die on the same day, but he burned the offering for them on the anniversary of the day Anna was killed, because that was the day Tellah wrote the final glyph of his own fate.

Edward wondered sometimes why he had not followed Tellah… but that was not what Anna would have wished of him.

Rydia waited by his side until the incense burned down to dull red fire beneath grey ash, and then winked out to nothing. Then she looked at him, with her eyes older than her face, and said, “Shall we go in?”

Edward drew his fingers through the ash in the bowls, and said, “Yes.”


End file.
